


It Is Better This Way

by rainydaykate



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:47:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2700161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainydaykate/pseuds/rainydaykate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen and Lavellan are happily involved--but sometimes he can't help feeling a little insecure over her relationship with Solas. While at camp one night, Solas confronts him about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Is Better This Way

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written any fic for a couple years now, but it looks like DA:I has its hooks in me. Basically, I love Cullen, but the Solas romance feels... like it's supposed to be the "right" one, I guess. I wanted to see if I could combine the two narratively in a way that allowed for a happy ending. I hope you enjoy it!

“It is better this way.”

Cullen did not ask Solas what he meant by this. There was no need to do so. In perhaps-reflexive response to the mage’s words, his head snapped up as he sought Inquisitor Lavellan’s eyes across the campsite. As she met his gaze, he watched her features slacken, a tender softness taking over her countenance. He smirked before looking away, smug shem that he was—as she occasionally called him, affectionately, when he started acting cocky. As if he could avoid feeling pleased with himself for having earned the right, by whatever stroke of dumb luck had graced him, to call the Herald his lover.

He glanced up at her again. Then he looked sharply away as he saw the look she was now sharing with Solas—not the same kind of amorous warmth she had with the Commander, true, but a powerful gaze all the same: steady, honest, trusting.

Most days he found himself quite able to forget about the history—however slight—that the Inquisitor had shared with Solas in the early days of the Inquisition. Lavellan, despite her indiscriminately flirtatious tendencies, had been especially vigilant in those days about keeping her personal matters to herself; most—save himself and, perhaps, her other advisors—had paid no mind to the long hours the two elves had often spent in each other’s company back at Haven, walking and talking—sparingly, solemnly—in the snow. After a certain point, Cullen had even managed to convince himself that he was reading too much into things: they shared a heritage, after all, and magical abilities, and was it really so strange that she should come to cherish the friendship of someone familiar in light of the circumstances into which she’d been so abruptly thrown?

But Cullen had noticed, one day, a change in Lavellan’s dynamic with Solas that both confirmed what Cullen had previously suspected—and also suggested that whatever had previously been going on between Solas and the Inquisitor had come to an end. The Commander had resolved, at that point, to put all untoward thoughts of the woman out of his mind, and he surprised himself by largely succeeding. So much so, in fact, that even in spite of their growing camaraderie—the chess games, which grew in frequency from every other week to nearly every day; the crude notes they passed each other at the war table when they thought Leliana and Josephine weren’t paying attention—Cullen hadn’t noticed how strong (nor how apparently evident) his feelings for Lavellan had become until the day she asked to speak to him on the battlements.

That was the day he kissed her for the first time. It was hardly the last.

And, most days, Cullen was satisfied. It made him positively giddy to know that he, of all people, could make such a fiercely composed and intelligent woman blush or lose her train of thought. It thrilled him to pull her into Skyhold’s most secluded corners, just the two of them, in between appointments. Even fending off Leliana and Josephine’s lighthearted jabs only served to bolster the pride he took in being the lover of such an incredible woman. Why should it matter to Cullen what relationship she may have had with Solas in the past when theirs was in the present?

And yet.

Though Inquisitor Lavellan had ceased to flirt with Solas, had ceased to apprise him with her eyes when she thought nobody else was paying attention, the two remained close. They continued, though less frequently, to slip away for long, sequestered conversations. Most of the time, Cullen was able to remind himself that this was not his concern, that his trust in her needed to supersede his own insecurities. ( _I am too old for her, I am too foreign, too broken, she will never—but she has, in the end, hasn’t she, after all?_ ) But every once in a while—especially when she was off traveling with Solas and scant few others to some far-flung corner of Thedas so she could soothe some noble’s temper tantrum or the like—he couldn’t help but wonder.

Solas’s comment—here, at their campsite not far from Samson’s fortress, as Cullen polished his blade in preparation for their assault in the morning—was not helping.

“I seek not to insert myself in affairs that are not my own. But I know you wonder,” the bald elf continued. “I want to promise you that you need not.”

Cullen’s hand stilled over his weapon. Silence. Interminable silence.

Finally, as Solas turned away, Cullen spoke. “I imagine your intentions in telling me this were good. But does my soul little good to be reminded that I was not her first choice.”

There was not even the slightest rustle as Solas moved to sit closer to the Commander. “No. You were not. But you were, after all, her final choice.”

Cullen spoke slowly, unsure of how to pose the question he most wanted to ask. “Then she was the one who…?”

“I told her I had not forgotten… a moment we had shared.” Solas hesitated. “She informed me that perhaps I should.”

“Does it… bother you?” asked Cullen. “To see her with me?”

Solas gave a lopsided smile. It was the most unguarded expression Cullen had ever seen on the mage’s face. “In all my years, I have never met anyone like her. Never anyone who might have managed to sway me from my work. If she had wanted to… pursue things, I cannot guarantee I would have had the wisdom to stay away.” He paused. “I am infinitely grateful to her for the fact that I will never have to make that decision.”

Before Cullen could respond, Solas stood. “It is, as I said, better this way. I cannot guess at her reasons for ending things—but I can promise you that it was never influenced by any misgivings of my own. She does not know that I could not have given her what she wanted. It is better that she never had to learn it.”

Following this quiet admission was such a gentle silence Cullen might have assumed the mage to have left. But the next time Cullen looked up he saw that Solas still stood beside him—gazing at Levellan with an expression Cullen had never seen Solas harbor toward anyone else. For this reason, it took him a moment to recognize Solas’s expression not as lust or ardor—but as a respect more profound than he had ever seen in anyone before.

Solas placed a slim hand on Cullen’s shoulder; his lips parted, but he remained silent. When the elf finally spoke, his words were quiet and firm. “I only ask,” he said, “that you do her justice.”

At that, he slipped away into the woods, leaving Cullen with his whetstone and his blade.

“Enjoying some family bonding, are we?”

Cullen nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the Inquisitor’s voice. She laughed affectionately at him as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

“That’s right. Mock my frayed nerves, why don’t you, my dear. It isn’t as if I’m terribly accustomed to all this journeying.”

“Really! Does my Commander miss the quiet security of his office?” She leaned in close, her lips brushing his ear. “I know I harbor some particularly fond memories of that desk of yours…”

He grinned as he recalled the memory of their first night together. That was the thing, after all, wasn’t it? Solas was right—she  _had_ chosen Cullen. And she continued to choose him, didn’t she, every day.

As Cullen let the elven woman pull him to his feet, he cast a glance out at the woods. For a brief moment, he could swear he saw the vast form of a wolf. He could swear, in that moment, that the wolf’s eyes had met his own. But when he looked again there was nothing there.

No matter. He took his lover by the hand and started leading her to his tent—in awe, once more, of his unfathomable luck.


End file.
